You Just Have To Love Someone
by SomewhereApart
Summary: Charlotte never planned on loving Cooper Freedman. But she does, and now she's stuck with it.


**Title:** _You Don't Need to Be A Heroin Addict or A Performance Artist to Experience Extremity (You Just Have to Love Someone)_

**Fandom:** Private Practice

**Pairing:** Charlotte/Cooper

**Rating:** PG13

**Spoilers:** Up to 2.08 "Crime and Punishment"

**Summary:** Charlotte never planned on loving Cooper Freedman. But she does, and now she's stuck with it.

**Author's Note:** Title from How to Be Good by Nick Hornby

* * *

There are many things that Charlotte King loves. High on the list (in no particular order) are strong coffee, running until her lungs burn, good sex, strawberry ice cream, and Cooper Freedman. It's the last one that keeps giving her trouble.

Before Cooper, her dating strategy had been always been practical. That was what she'd told herself. When it came to men and sex, she was nothing but practical. Relationships were distracting, and took effort to do right, and she had neither the time, nor the patience, nor the willingness to share that it took to make a good relationship work. She'd learned that one the hard way years ago, and she wasn't going to put herself in that position again.

Luckily for her, getting her itches scratched string-free never seemed to be a difficult task. When she had time, there was always the foolproof short-dress-high-heels-three-drinks-and-a-dance-or-two strategy to snare herself a night's entertainment. When she didn't have time, or when she had what one might call a less conventional itch in need of scratching, the internet had never failed her.

Until Cooper.

She still remembered vividly the night of that colossal (and fortuitous) failure of technology. She'd been sitting at the bar in a dress that showed off plenty of skin without being slutty, perfumed and made up, and in dire need of a good seeing to. Work had been hell, and Landry had called to ask her yet again to please come home and see Big Daddy and help wrangle Mama, and all she'd wanted was to spend the night getting every last thought thoroughly screwed out of her brain. Instead, she'd spent it chin-deep in a bubble bath, wracking her mind for any possible way she could never _ever_ have to see anyone at Oceanside Wellness ever again, because she'd had no doubt that Dr. Cooper Freedman would find the whole situation a hilarious and irresistible piece of gossip to be shared with the whole damned practice, and while Charlotte certainly isn't ashamed of her sex life, she is and always has been a firm believer that business is business and pleasure is pleasure and ne'er the two shall mix.

But when she'd shown up the next morning and nobody so much as looked at her funny, she'd realized that he'd kept her secret. When he'd needled her for a drink, she'd accepted half out of surprise that he was still interested (and in _her_, no less, not just a quick roll in between the sheets) and half because, well, she'd still been feeling twitchy and empty and (if she was honest) a little bit lonely. If the drink went well, she'd figured she could maybe get away with mixing business and pleasure just this once. They'd made it as far as the parking structure before she'd decided _to hell with the drink, she needed the sex_, and she'd turned so abruptly that their bodies almost slammed together before she'd asked pointedly if he had booze at his place.

She'd spent the night because she'd been exhausted, and his bed was comfortable, and she'd been fairly certain her legs had stopped working after the last blistering orgasm. She'd never have guessed it from the look of him, but Cooper Freedman was a damn good lay. Enthusiastic, and accommodating, and with stamina she still suspected he might have sold his soul for. When she woke to the toe-curling sensation of _that thing _he does with his tongue between her thighs (responsible for rapid-succession orgasms one and two the night before), she'd had the fleeting thought that he was perfect before she came in a shower of sparking pleasure. It wasn't until she had flipped him over and was riding him slowly (and God, she loved lazy morning sex with him), that she'd realized she had slept so soundly that he'd been able to tongue her almost to bursting before she'd fought herself awake. She'd blamed the mindblowing sex, and it had taken several weeks of good sleep next to Cooper before she was willing to admit to herself that the secret to her newfound rest might just be that she liked the feel of a warm body in her bed.

Still, it was supposed to be just sex. It was always supposed to be just sex. Incredible, brain-frying, shameless, say-my-name, no-kink-he-won't-indulge sex, but just sex nonetheless. But then he'd started talking about telling people (she couldn't believe he wanted to admit he was dating _Charlotte King_, and she couldn't bear the idea of being known as "Cooper's girlfriend" -- or if she was honest, "Cooper's ex-girlfriend" because she'd known that was what she would inevitably become), and going on vacations, and talking about their days and she'd realized that he'd grown from wanting "just sex" to "just all of her" and she'd been both flattered and terrified at the same time.

But however she'd felt, he'd been persistent, picking at her reservations like a loose string in a sweater until they began to unravel row by row. Until she began to miss him when he wasn't around. Until she began to reach for the phone when she was angry or frustrated (she never dialed, of course). Until she volunteered for HIV tests not because condomless sex was cheaper or faster or more illicit, but because she'd wanted to really feel him and had wanted him to really feel her. She'd even let him be on top, once or twice, telling him she was exhausted from work and wanted to lay back and let him do all the heavy lifting for once when really she'd just wanted to test out the feel of surrender to this whirligig of emotion she'd suddenly found herself in.

And now… now she was in love with him. Painfully, brilliantly in love with him. She was in love with Cooper Freedman like she'd never been in love with anyone, and of course (because she was a master at bad karma and self-sabotage) she'd gone and screwed everything up.

Violet had been wrong about Pacific, about Charlotte's reasons for not telling Cooper, but what could she do? Admit it? Admit that yes, okay, it was self-serving – she hadn't been sure she'd nailed the interview, and being able to provide such a perfect space gave her a definite leg up. But more than that, it had been a stupid romantic notion. His practice was drowning, and he was agonizing over it all damned day, and she could do this one thing and maybe fix it. Help herself, help Oceanside. And sure, she was opening a competing practice, but Oceanside had such a niche and such a damned strong team that Pacific wouldn't pull them under.

And then she couldn't tell him, because she knew if she told him, he'd tell Violet, and she'd tell everyone, and then Charlotte would have violated her agreement and lost her job (and didn't he get that? Didn't he get that not telling him wasn't just some cold, deceitful thing she'd done but a calculated decision in the face of very real legal and professional repercussions?). She'd figured he'd be upset, but that it would blow over. And once it had, he could quit bitching about his job, and she could sneak upstairs for lunchtime quickies without the fifteen-minute-each-way drive cutting into her lunch hour. She'd wanted a change from the hospital, and she'd wanted to see him. Her stupid lovesick heart had wanted to know what it would be like to have him close.

Ridiculous. Look where love had gotten her now: sitting in an empty hallway with her stomach all in knots, outside a door she'd had a key to just last week. Waiting. Waiting for Cooper to come home so she could beg his forgiveness. So she could tell him she'd do anything now; she was a wrecked woman. She'd walk on glass if he would just take her back and fill the gnawing emptiness in her gut, loosen the tightness in her chest. If he would just let her hem and haw and chew through her pride long enough to tell him that wanting him to be a part of her life was irrelevant, because her traitorous heart had already taken him in and held him tight and made the decision for her.

As he rounds the corner and sees her, his face falling and his step faltering, she thinks of strawberry ice cream, and sex, and running, and coffee, and then she thinks that maybe of all the things she loves, it's Cooper Freedman she loves most of all.


End file.
